This should ALSO be required reading for any Bush supporter, who feels that Bush is a "wise, moral and compassionate" man.
It couldn't be any further from the truth.
Aug. 13, 2005, 8:56PM
OUR UNFEELING PRESIDENT
Bush cannot grieve because he doesn't know what death is
By E.L. DOCTOROW
Editor's note: The article below was written by novelist E.L. Doctorow for The East Hampton Star, and was originally published on Sept 9, 2004. Since that time the number of American war dead in Iraq has risen to more than 1,800.
I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-Day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.
But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.
He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn or a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the 1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be.
They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life ... they come to his desk as a political liability, which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq.
How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret, and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that, rather than controlling terrorism, his war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice.
The Rest:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3309407August 16, 2005
White House Diary of a Sociopath
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
As we've mentioned before, BuzzFlash gets a large number of review copies of books and publishing house preview catalogues, because we are a major independent seller of progressive books. And from time to time, we come across a book description that strikes us as particularly relevant to current events and personalities.
As we read the marketing copy for The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us by Martha Stout, Ph.D. (Broadway Books, March, 2006), we were reminded of an essay last year that the author E.L. Doctorow wrote on Bush. It included the following sentence: "He (Bush) cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves."
But is there more to what ails Bush from a mental health stand point?
Maybe the forthcoming book, The Sociopath Next Door, can help explore that question. Here is how the Broadway Books (a Division of Random House) catalogue describes the content:
We are accustomed to think of sociopaths as violent criminals, but in The Sociopath Next Door, clinical psychologist Martha Stout reveals that a shocking 4 percent of ordinary people have an often undetected mental disorder, the chief symptom of which is that that person possesses no conscience. They can do literally anything at all and feel absolutely no guilt.
One of their chief characteristics is a charisma that makes them more charming or interesting than other people, and tricky to identify. Sociopaths learn early on to show sham emotion, but underneath they are indifferent to others' suffering. They live to dominate and thrill to win.
We all almost certainly know at least one or more sociopaths already. To arm us against them, Dr. Stout teaches us to question authority, suspect flattery, and beware the pity play. Above all, she warns, when a sociopath is beckoning, do not join the game.
The Rest:
http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/05/08/ana050285.html August 16, 2005
Of Course He Is a Psychopath ...
A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Elizabeth
... or a sociopath -- the distinction here is insignificant.
I'm a mental health professional and psychopaths are a professional interest of mine. There is little doubt that Bush's is a psychopathic character structure.
Another, and I think very appropriate term to describe psychopathy is emotional retardation -- an inability to experience higher emotions expressive of the highest human values (such as empathy and guilt, sympathy, compassion, devotion to common human ideals such as peace, for example, etc.).
A psychopath is a person who uses his often considerable intelligence in the service of his primitive drives (think sex, aggression, power). Being fairly bright, he learns, imperfectly, to mimic emotional expressions suggestive of some higher emotions (compassion, for example), but his reactions hardly fool anyone because they ring hollow as there is no truth and authenticity in them. He can use lofty words when needed -- an easy thing for a fairly intelligent psychopath -- but there is no emotional content to them.
Just look at Bush's responses whenever he is asked, unscripted, about anything that would require him to express either empathy, or caring and compassion for others, including his own family members. He stammers and stumbles, tries some platitudes or inappropriate jokes, and eventually makes a fool of himself. It is always painful to watch and it clearly demonstrates his emotional retardation.
Even most recently, when asked about Cindy Sheehan, he responded by saying "And I think it's important for me to be thoughtful and sensitive to those who have got something to say." He followed it with "I think it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life."
This statement in itself is very revealing. First, it sounds like something Bush has just learned to say on advice of his handlers who reminded him to pretend to be human (he *thinks* it is *important* for him to be thoughtful and sensitive ...). Not that he knows what this means, or that any of it resonates emotionally for him, as evidenced by how quickly he closed this statement with a glib reference to, what else, his own need for a "balanced life," a reference that sounds so incredibly insensitive in this context that it completely invalidates the message intended in his previous sentence.
The Rest:
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/05/08/con05291.html
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